Mike Maples
Founding Partner, Floodgate. On 6 shows, 7 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderoperatorexecutiveauthor@m2jr ↗LinkedIn ↗floodgate.com ↗
Mike Maples Jr. is a prominent early-stage investor who backed foundational technology companies including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, and Okta at the seed stage. Prior to co-founding Floodgate, he was an operating executive at Tivoli Systems and Motive, and he co-authored the 2024 book Pattern Breakers.
6shows
7appearances
157statements
21resolved
15supported
2contradicted
71%fully supported
13said about them ↓ Everything Mike Maples said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Maples: Elon Musk won't be able to mass-fire federal workers
“Like, I don't think that Elon is going to be able to do what he did with, say, Twitter, and fire a bunch of people and, you know, change all the rules.”
Maples: $20M-$30M post-money seed rounds generate poor investor returns
“When a seed round is priced at 20 post, 30 post, it's not non-consensus. It's priced to perfection, and it's priced in a way that everybody believes it's gonna succeed, that it's a hot deal. And that's bad for two reasons. It's bad for the investor, Because ev…”
Maples: Zenefits Was YC's Only Startup With PMF That Failed
“The only one he could name was Zenefits, and they broke the law.”
Maples: Blitzscaling is an edge case for rare market conditions
“It's really not. It's an edge case for a very rare condition where it's clear that the market is pulling these features out of the market massively quickly, and somebody has to fulfill that demand the first.”
Maples: Venture capital signaling risk is overrated
“I think signaling is overrated. I think that companies that perform well always raise money. And companies that perform so-so Can sometimes benefit from a positive signal, but usually, usually not being able to raise is a function of not getting product market…”
Maples: Protecting SVB depositors does not resemble a bailout
“Yeah, it's incredible to me that you could put your money in a bank, that there's not transparent reporting that the federal government said was okay, and now it's like somehow an entrepreneur's fault because The bank's assets weren't what they said they were,…”
Maples: VCs must prioritize LP fiduciary duty over bank loyalty
“Yeah, and I mean, like that's not the decision I would have made, right? I'm not gonna judge who made what decision, but my view is that it's not my money. And you know, if I was the Stanford Endowment, if I was you know, Sloan Kettering, what would I want Flo…”
Maples: Floodgate initial check writers cannot allocate follow-on reserves
“We have a partner dedicated just to follow on investing, and so the person that writes the first check Doesn't get to decide who writes the follow on check.”
Maples: Product-market fit is the sole requirement for startup success
“If we get product market fit, we will be successful almost no matter what else happens. And if we don't get product market fit, we can do everything else right. It won't matter.”
Maples: Great startup founders act like time travelers visualizing different futures
“If you want to start a great startup, don't try to think of a startup. And the reason for that is that great startup founders are like time travelers, and they get out of the present, and they visualize different futures that are a breakthrough, that break fre…”
Maples: Startups can only beat incumbents by riding major technological inflections
“Only with big inflections does an entrepreneur go from being disadvantaged to incumbents to having a fundamental advantage vis-a-vis incumbents.”
Maples: Software-defined network companies will continuously displace legacy industrial firms
“And so in sector after sector of our economy, the companies that are software defined at their core, I believe software defined network centric companies at their core are going to keep winning. And they're going to keep displacing the companies that think of …”
Maples: Early-stage startups are founder talent and insights, not companies
“I don't even think a startup is a company, right? So I think a startup is, The capabilities and talents of the founders and their insight about the future and what you're betting is on two things. One is that their insights, right? And two is they're good enou…”
Maples: Skipping startup steps leads to fake growth
“I believe that you can't really skip a step. You got to have an insight before you do customer development, and you got to do customer development before you do smart growth. And so to the extent that raising too much too soon Causes people to skip those steps…”
Maples: Evaluating seed startups as businesses gives the wrong answers
“When I think about what is seed investing really, it's not investing in a business because it's not a business yet. In fact, evaluating it as a business will give you precisely the wrong answer most of the time.”
Maples: Startups should target at least three years of cash runway
“I like to assert it should be a minimum three years.”
Maples: Floodgate Rejects Voting Systems, Requiring Table-Pounding Conviction
“We have a rule at floodgate where there's no voting system. And for a deal to happen, someone has to pound the table.”
Maples: Most VC Bridge Rounds Are Actually "Piers to Nowhere"
“Most bridges really aren't bridges. They're what I would call a pier. So, you know, sort of like, yeah, we need more money. I'm like, a bridge is like when somebody's come in and said, I'm going to put money in this company, but we're out of money until the de…”
Maples: Floodgate's biggest venture wins were not competitive deals when funded
“In our sector of the business, everything is so crazy, early, risky, and maybe even legally ambiguous. It's hard for me to say that, that our very best wins have been hotly contested and competed for, at least at the time we invested.”
Maples: Category Kings Capture 80% of Total Market Profits
“If you're the king of a category, you change the way a customer spends their money, which is ultimately why category king gets 80% of the profits.”
Maples: Number One Reason Floodgate Passes Is Ideas Unworthy of Founders
“The number one reason I pass on companies is I don't think the idea is worthy of the founder's talent.”
Maples: Floodgate Will Never Scale to a Multi-Hundred-Million-Dollar Fund
“No, we'd never be that big. I don't think we'll ever be as big of a fund as like the Series A guys.”
Maples: Radically Successful Startups Often Ignore Standard Business Playbooks
“I found that a lot of the companies that I worked with that had massive success didn't do the stuff you're supposed to do. They didn't do the business model canvas. They didn't do the kind of experiments you're supposed to run. They didn't hire the people the …”
The other half of the tape: Mike Maples's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. 11 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 1Chris Douvos 1
Statements about Mike Maples, by other people (11)
Kupor: Most startup bridge rounds are simply bridges to nowhere
“I would agree with Mike that unfortunately a lot of them are bridges to nowhere. You know, most of the time, in my experience, it's pretty clear, though, whether that's the case or whether you are bridging to something.”
Neil Young: Mike Maples provides pragmatic 'lizard brain' clarity on boards
“If Bing is the wizard brain, Mike is the lizard brain, or as probably he would like to be the thunder lizard brain, but the lizard brain in that Mike very expertly states the obvious. His instincts about what you should do at any given point in time are not pa…”
Ferriss treated his initial $120K angel investing budget as non-refundable tuition
“Why don't I take what I would have spent on tuition, a 120 K for two years, something like that. And that would have been sunk cost. I pay out of pocket. And what's the hope with business school, what you learn and the connections you make, make it worth it th…”
Srugo: Scaling from $1M to $10M ARR matters far more than reaching $1M
“The thing that matters, you know, in his view, and I would tend to agree is not how fast you get to a million, but how fast you can get to 10. Like that one to 10 is really the thing that'll set you on this kind of different trajectory.”
Walk: Venture fund size dictates investment strategy
“People attribute this to Mike Maple's affiliate and it's a hundred percent true. Like your fund size is your strategy, right?”
The largest venture outcomes require pivots and extra discovery time
“And so the more we looked, the more we found that the biggest outcomes of the vintage were companies that had either pivoted once or on their second or third business model, or took a little bit more Time and that learning and discovery phrase to use Mike Mapl…”
Liemandt: Ballmer, Gates, and Maples Called Shared Job Candidates
“Whether it was Balmer Gates or Mike Maple, the other third in the office of the president. Those three would call all our candidates, and we would just continue to fight, and it would escalate, right?”
Parr: Regulatory and Political Inflections Spark Massive New Businesses
“This is a perfect example of a regulation slash political inflection. And that, that big businesses are built in times like this.”
Gordon: Mike Maples provides game-changing insights in every board meeting
“So I love Mike Maples from Floodgate. He's been, I've been on a couple boards with him. What he does is so well, he has high empathy for CEOs. It seems in every board meeting, he says at least one thing that's game changing.”
Haroun: Eudia raised a $6M seed round from Mike Maples at ideation
“Yeah, we raised a small, like, well, not small by all standards, but like a six million dollar seed round. That was Mike Maples, who's a longtime mentor, and back to my last company, you know, he basically not only funded this when it was like an idea on a nap…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 1
Capital Allocators 1
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mike's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 5 | 116 | 62% 8/13 | full record on 20VC → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 0 | 0 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
 LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 0 | 0 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 0 | 0 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
 MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 1 | 22 | 100% 1/1 | full record on My First Million → |
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Founding Partner, Floodgate | 1 | 19 | 100% 2/2 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |